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Tune in to 'Night'

Chris Azzopardi

Gay radio personality Gabriel Noone (Robin Williams) doesn't always tell stories based on his life verbatim. He embellishes them, twisting them into amusing, but not always truthful, anecdotes.
In "The Night Listener" Noone's character, in the midst of personal issues, becomes intrigued with a 14-year-old boy, Pete Logand (Rory Culkin), who establishes a long-distance phone relationship with the late-night radio host and who plans on publishing a memoir about his abusive childhood called "The Blacking Factory."
Noone learns, through multiple conversations with the boy and his protective adoptive mother Donna (Toni Collette), that AIDS-afflicted Pete only has a few months to live.
At the same time, Gabriel's considerably younger boyfriend Jess (Bobby Cannavale) is HIV-positive and questions – on a visit to Gabriel's apartment – the existence of Pete.
"You're the f–king one who can't see the reality!" Gabriel retorts in one scene.
Shortly after Gabriel and his boyfriend part, he clings closer to Pete and Donna. When the publishing house backs away from a deal on Pete's book, Gabriel, glum and vulnerable, treks to the Logands' small Wisconsin town in search of the truth.
As Gabriel searches for this child's existence he's sucked into an obsessive web and the film evolves into a personal, sometimes terrifying, journey.
Inspired by a true account of gay author Armistead Maupin, who developed the story into a novel in 2000, "The Night Listener" is an often-engaging psychological thriller built deeply on the roles of the protagonists.
The film, with its dark shots and uncomfortable aura, gradually builds tension, which is intensified with Peter Nashel's haunting score. But it's Gabriel's sensitive and depressed state, convincingly dramatized by Williams that makes "The Night Listener" an appealing character piece, even if Collette's character isn't fully developed – a tactic used to offer a lingering uncertainty about Pete's existence.
Collette gives Donna a spacey and homely appeal, while Sandra Oh, albeit in a limited role as Gabriel's accountant, offers sarcastic and witty contrast to the unnerving tone of the film.
There are few moments where Maupin, Terry Anderson and Patrick Stettner's screenplay lags. Although it loses some steam in the second half, "The Night Listener" is still an unrelenting guessing game that pegs seeing against believing.

To read about film author Armistead Maupin, click here

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